Barbican Britten: The Sixteen, 22 Nov

Fourth Dance: Country Girls
Sweet flag and cuckoo flower,
Cowslip and columbine,
Kingcups and sops in wine,
Flower deluce and calaminth,
Harebell and hyacinth,
Myrtle and bay with rosemary between,
Norfolk’s own garlands for her Queen.
Behold a troop of rustic swains,
Bringing from the waves and pastures
the fruits of their toil.
At the wall’s base the fiery nettle springs
With fruit globose and fierce with poison’d stings;
In every chink delights the fern to grow,
With glossy leaf and tawny bloom below;
The few dull flowers that o’er the place
are spread
Partake the nature of their fenny bed.
These, with our sea-weeds rolling up and down,
Form the contracted Flora of our town.
10
Fifth Dance: Rustics and Fishermen
From fen and meadow
In rushy baskets
They bring ensamples
Of all they grow.
In earthen dishes
Their deep-sea fishes;
Yearly fleeces,
Woven blankets;
New cream and junkets,
And rustic trinkets
On wicker flaskets,
Their country largess,
The best they know.
Led by Time and Concord,
let all unite in homage to Gloriana,
our hope of peace, our flower of grace.
Sixth Dance: Final Dance of Homage
These tokens of our love receiving,
O take them, Princess great and dear,
From Norwich city you are leaving,
That you afar may feel us near.
William Plomer (1903–73)
interval: 20 minutes
Five Flower Songs
3 Marsh Flowers
Here the strong mallow strikes her slimy root,
Here the dull nightshade hangs her deadly fruit:
On hills of dust the henbane’s faded green,
And pencil’d flower of sickly scent is seen.
Here on its wiry stem, in rigid bloom,
Grows the lavender that lacks perfume.
George Crabbe (1754–1832)
4 The evening primrose
When once the sun sinks in the west,
And dewdrops pearl the evening’s breast;
Almost as pale as moonbeams are,
Or its companionable star,
The evening primrose opes anew
Its delicate blossoms to the dew
And, hermit-like, shunning the light,
Wastes its fair bloom upon the night;
Who, blindfold to its fond caresses,
Knows not the beauty he possesses.
Thus it blooms on while night is by;
When day looks out with open eye,
’Bashed at the gaze it cannot shun,
It faints and withers and is gone.
John Clare (1793–1864)
The Ballad of Little Musgrave and
Lady Barnard
As it fell on one holyday,
As many be in the year,
When young men and maids together did go
Their matins and mass to hear,
Little Musgrave came to the church door –
The priest was at private mass –
But he had more mind of the fair women
Than he had of Our Lady’s grace.
The one of them was clad in green
Another was clad in pall,
And then came in my Lord Barnard’s wife,
The fairest amongst them all,
Quoth she, ‘I’ve loved thee, Little Musgrave,
Full long and many a day.’
‘So have I lov’d you, my fair ladye,
Yet never a word durst I say.’
‘But I have a bower at Bucklesfordberry,
Full daintily it is dight,
If thou’lt wend thither, thou Little Musgrave,
Thou’s lig in my arms all night.’